Conventional waste handling systems used by public and private corporations generally require one vehicle to collect and discharge refuse, such as garbage, and a second vehicle to collect and discharge recyclable materials such as paper, glass, metal, and plastics. Most often such systems require two operators and hence many waste management systems consist of two fleets of separate and distinct vehicles, with four operators required to service a given pick-up route to collect and discharge wastes and recyclables.
Attempts have been made to combine the two functions of refuse handling and recycling in one vehicle but by and large such vehicles have not been totally satisfactory. Often two operators are required, and in many systems the capacity of the vehicle or its operating characteristics have precluded it from being a truly one man, economical, universal waste management vehicle.
One of the characteristics of current waste management vehicles is a relatively low load efficiency; that is, a low ratio of legal load to empty vehicle weight. Many such vehicles, for example, have only about a 70-75% ratio and this results in relatively high unit costs of operation when fuel and related factors, including the ratio of useable time to dead time, are taken into consideration. In this connection, the lack of utilization of the space taken up by the conventional tail gate is a significant factor since the weight of the tail gate is substantial and yet it performs no storage functions.
A further drawback of conventional waste management vehicles is the inability of those few systems which have attempted to employ a tag axle to evenly distribute weight, within legal on-highway load requirements, on the tag and drive axles as the load in the vehicle increases. Further, it appears that the ability to increase the load on the drive axle for off highway use, as in a landfill environment, at the expense of loading on the tag axle, has not been achieved in a one man combined refuse and recyclable vehicle.
In summary, there is a need in the waste management industry to reduce fleet size, route time and operational costs in the collection and discharge of refuse and recyclables.